I’ve allways been a devoted fan of The Great British Sewing Bee and have quite the collection of accompanying books. They’re fantastic, the introductory chapters are clear and provide most of the “beggining to sew” information you’ll need, and the projects are definitively wearable, still somehow I never managed to make anything out of them. 😳

I finally decided to put the last of the books to good use and sew two of the projects. I started with the breton top.

It is a simple, classical style top. I’m not in love with the fit, looking at the finished measurements it had a lot of positive ease at the shoulder – bust area, so I cut a size down, but still I don’t think it suits me.

The top included a wide split hem, yet this made the top too short for me, so I just made the regular twin-needle hem. The fabric is a medium weight jersey from The Sweet Mercerie and even though I don’t like the fit of the top my stripe matching skills are flawless 😀

The second project I decided to try from the book is the Japanese-style top.

Again this had a bunch of positive ease at the shoulders, so I decided to cut a size smaller at the bust and then widen to my size at the hip. The fabric is a lighter jersey from The Sweet Mercerie, I love the pairing of this “mélange” with this pattern – a match made in heaven. I’m super chuffed with this, the project photo in the book wasn’t a favourite but it did turn out quite cute.

And because I didn’t want to leave it unblogged, here’s a photo of the sweater I knit for T. for Valentine’s. It was a pattern test for Reiko Kuamura, the pattern is Ryo:

I knit it using yarn from Brancal I bought years ago (Australia yarn), but I’m a bit disappointed in the quality. I think the twist is a bit too loose for a merino yarn, I already had to de-pill the sweater with only a few uses. I should have made he sleeves a bit longer, T. has the (bad) habit of hiking up his sleeves which stretched out the cuffs and I think that it also made the sleeves shorter (in my mind if you stretch stitches horizontally they’ll loose lenght). More technical knitting details on Ravelry.